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Work, play, family and other stuff
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“Referee!” – Sport’s IoT revolutionhttps://tphallett.com/2016/02/29/referee-sports-iot-revolution/
https://tphallett.com/2016/02/29/referee-sports-iot-revolution/#respondMon, 29 Feb 2016 18:57:41 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1111There’s a revolution we might just miss. Any discussions you might have heard about technology and sport are likely to have focused on teams’ and players’ ability to their improve their performances and, secondary to that, how fans benefit from being ‘in amongst’ the action. Rarely do they mention refereeing. But this could be just as big, as any fan screaming at a wrong decision knows.

The Internet of Things (IoT) means joining and analysing the data created by billions of sensors on objects large and small. Whereas only so many humans and traditional communications devices (phones, tablets, servers and the rest) can be internet-connected, there is almost no limit on this growing galaxy of objects. Combining research from ABI, Gartner, IDC and McKinsey gives us a forecast of 26-30 billion IoT connections by 2020. The market will be worth trillions of dollars.

But there’s rarely a game – of almost any sport – that goes by when I don’t think we could have a better experience by using IoT to stop cheating and bad calls.

Put it this way: as football players’ every move is generally tracked by GPS transmitters and accelerometers (those bulges inbetween their shoulder blades aren’t muscles), the biggest innovation of recent years has been refs using spray foam to mark where a free kick should be taken from and where a wall is allowed to stand, 10 yards away. (My dad would point out they were using this low-tech long ago in South American football.)

Anyone notice a disconnect on the technology side of things?

To be fair, sports such as cricket have embraced technology for officiating, in terms of things like predictive tracking (Hawkeye) and use of sound/heat to determine whether ball has hit bat or something else (Snicko/Hotspot – other systems are available).

And the ability for other sports such as ice hockey, golf and tennis to put technology not just on players or in the environment in which they play but on players’ equipment is likely to lead to even more precise tracking. Note for American football there is also a safety element to this – sensors in helmets tracking particularly dangerous hits – while in a nod to the Deflategate scandal of the 2014/15 season there has also been talk of real-time monitoring of the pressure of footballs.

But aren’t we missing out on some basics? Here are some examples:

Ever see fans at the side of a football game get upset when an opposing player ‘steals a few yards’ and takes a throw-in or free-kick from the wrong place? In a recent Chelsea v Man United game, Chelsea defender Gary Cahill tried to take a free kick awarded for offside from Manchester United’s half, not his. The player from the other team couldn’t have been given offside in his own half. How hard would it be, especially with throw-ins, for a marker to show where the ball went out and where the player taking the throw-in should stand?

Then take the issue of what constitutes ground and what is air. I know, that sounds ridiculous. But take these scenarios.

– In cricket, there is often controversy over whether a ball was ‘up’ when a fielder takes a catch. Replay after replay tends to accentuate the view that a ball ‘was grounded’ before the ball was caught. Traditionally, players tend to know if they got under the ball or not but television replays have led to bad decisions.

– In rugby, just as big a decision comes when players are scoring a try in a corner but their legs are being tackled into touch. The decision in those cases for off-the-field referees viewing replays is whether a ball has been touched down before another part of a player’s body – usually a foot or knee – has been grounded out of play. In 2007 England winger Mark Cueto ‘scored’ just such a try against South Africa in the rugby world cup final only to have been judged to have his trailing leg on the touchline and so out. A camera angle from behind the play couldn’t show perspective for what constituted ground or not. And does a blade of grass constitute ground? How about inbetween blades of grass, say a muddy spot?

Now imagine a system whereby the official surface level of a field of play is established by sensors. This could be at the official height of the grass, say 4cm for example. (Many sports have an official height – others leave such decisions to grounds people who similarly take into account weather conditions and wishes of home teams.)

This won’t be easy – for one thing many outdoor playing surfaces traditionally have a camber, to aid drainage of water – so we’re not talking about straight lines. But you can imagine how a system using infrared light (think high-tech anti-burglar tech) could achieve that.

And there are other advances that right now don’t appear easy but seem imaginable.

Ever get upset at the inconsistency – and blatant cheating – of shirt pulling in football, especially at corner kicks? Imagine if every player’s shirt and shorts could detect hands being placed on them?

Now football is a contact sport, unlike say (in theory) basketball, so you have to allow for other contact. And I don’t quite know the answer to someone grabbing their own shirt (perhaps just to blow their nose!) but clothing embedded with tiny sensors is a reality. Just don’t expect the same product to be sold in the club shop.

Some sports are famously more resistant to change – especially change that stops the flow of games – than others, so progress will be slow.

On the other hand, more and more is at stake. Getting decisions right is important. It’s hard to imagine that as technology affects most other aspects of sport and life that it won’t also come into play more and more here too.

]]>https://tphallett.com/2016/02/29/referee-sports-iot-revolution/feed/0Table footballtphallettTable football.jpgChoosing a dream clienthttps://tphallett.com/2014/10/20/choosing-a-dream-client/
https://tphallett.com/2014/10/20/choosing-a-dream-client/#respondMon, 20 Oct 2014 10:05:41 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1103What’s a dream client, why would you want one and how do you get one?

OK, I might not answer all those questions in depth but when I started this blog I promised I would write more about the growing pains of growing Collective Content – which I haven’t really done as much as I’d like.

But the above questions are important to anyone with their own business, however small, however fast-growing and successful.

I think we all know what a dream client would be. It means obvious things – you get on, they pay you properly and all of that side – but more importantly that you love working with them.

Consider:

People. A dream client would normally – though not always – involve people you’ve come to know or have worked with in the past. Chemistry is a high part of any dream client relationship and you know when you have that chemistry.

Desire. So a dream client means someone or a number of people you want to work with. But they should really want to work with you. It should be mutual.

Access. It’s not just about great people who value you too. A dream client should mean these people are close to you. Not all-the-time, always-on close. (That can be a bad thing.) But definitely not someone you shake hands with and never see again. Nor someone who then insists on you working through others, even other external agencies.

Meaning. And – not everyone will agree with me on this – I think a dream client should be involved in interesting, meaningful work. We hear how upcoming generations of workers want more than money. Well, it’s not only them. Helping someone do something for the greater good – sometimes referred to as a social enterprise – can matter for some. For me, it’s mainly that you believe in what they’re doing and get excited by it.

Whether at Collective Content or in my previous corporate life, I’ve been very lucky to work with bright people who often work at technology companies – companies that are very much changing the world around us, fast.

At Collective Content, we’re also attracted to clients who we can feel immediate benefit from our core services. Maybe they haven’t used media-grade content in the past or have had bad experiences. It’s not about novelty (for them), nor about low-hanging fruit (for us). It’s about making an impact with something we think a lot more exciting than some of their traditional marketing.

Why would anyone want a dream client? It sounds obvious to me.

How does someone get one – or two or a dozen? (Not sure anyone has 100 of them.)

People. Approach people you like and who like you, based on past work. Get that head start in expectations, trust and working rhythm.

Luck. On the flip side, chance your arm. We’re not quite there yet but we’ve approached companies we’ve admired over LinkedIn. It’s quite a powerful thing to hear “We love what you do. We’d love to help you and here’s how…”

The second tactic isn’t quite luck but it’s certainly about chancing your arm. Remember, I’m talking dream client. Not just very good or great clients.

And consider combining these two approaches. Of those you already know and who love what you do, who can put you in touch with someone you’ve researched?

Use your network. Use LinkedIn. Chance your arm. The pay-off will be worth it.

]]>https://tphallett.com/2014/10/20/choosing-a-dream-client/feed/0HandshaketphallettIn search of the WWI life and death of my great unclehttps://tphallett.com/2014/08/04/in-search-of-the-wwi-life-and-death-of-my-great-uncle/
https://tphallett.com/2014/08/04/in-search-of-the-wwi-life-and-death-of-my-great-uncle/#respondMon, 04 Aug 2014 13:12:21 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1070This story is for my great uncle Billy, even though I never met him. It’s also for his sister, my grandmother. And it’s finally for the rest of us, for our curiosity about the reality of World War I and properly exploring history.

But mostly it’s for Billy and gran.

The story begins with a small, tin container. About a year ago, five or so weeks after my dad died, since his funeral and well into the What the hell now? stage, I found the container at his house. It was with some other family possessions, some going back into the nineteenth century like an old family bible and portrait photos. But I’m pretty sure I’d never seen the tin before, unlike some of those other things.

It wasn’t much larger than a shoe box but it contained amazing items from Billy’s short life and – mostly – around his death.

While I just said this story begins with this box, I mean the box gave momentum to the following 12 months. When I found it I decided, pretty much on the spot, that as his great nephew I would be the first family member to visit his war grave in France. Or was it Belgium? Or the Netherlands, even?

I knew all that and lots more because as a kid my gran, born in 1904, recounted many stories about the family in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, the War years… you get the idea. I’d go as far as to say I knew more about great uncle Billy than my father did. After all, my father came along almost 20 years after Billy’s death and when he as an equivalent age to when I heard the stories he was going to school amid air raids and rationing. (The late 1970s were crap – just not for reasons in the same league.) My gran, as a mother, was way busier than those times she looked after me.

So I promised I would make that visit for her, for all the family, now I knew where the grave was exactly and now – to be honest – I had that sense of things you must do when you reach a certain age, lest you never make it, like too many of the rest of my family.

—

It turns out Billy was buried in quite a well-known First World War cemetery. My early research took me straight to Google Maps which showed it was only a short drive, maybe 45 minutes, north of Lille in France, though the location itself is just over the border in Belgium.

So it wasn’t hard to book some tickets on Eurostar and do the trip in a weekend. (If there’s one irony for my grandmother and her lack of foreign travel it’s that now – maybe even too a few decades ago – if you’re going to venture overseas, where I was heading was about as easy as it gets.)

But planning the logistics was easy. Before the trip, which took place last month, July 2014, I had months to make a much quieter journey, one on winter evenings through the container of documents relating to Billy.

I knew that my gran was the youngest of four brothers and sisters and that Billy was next closest to her in age. I thought there was four years between them but it turns out there was six. As a kid, my gran always said her brother loved children, was fun and gentle, always smiling. They played together even though there was quite an age gap. All her memories were of a wasted young life, someone who would have been a fine member of society with a family of his own and who knows what else.

I had it in my head that regardless of official enlistment ages he was only 17 when he was killed, though the trip would confirm he was 19 at the time of his death, most likely (I’ll get to that) in battle in October 1917.

In the box, the first things that grabbed my attention, time and again, were the photos. The first two here, to my mind anyway, were taken in a studio in England.

The first one has a twee country lane backdrop. It was printed as a postcard, which was very common back then, and has nothing on the reverse. Perhaps, historically, someone would be able to look at what he’s wearing and confirm whether he was indeed a grenadier, as gran used to tell me, with all the extra danger that entailed. Or does the bugle he’s holding tell us something else? I can’t tell. Not yet, anyway.

The second photo shows him from the waist up, perhaps sitting on a stool or bench. To me he looks more worried and less like my father than he did in the previous photo.

I’ve scanned the reverse of the photo too.

You can see it contains some wording which is another mystery. It shows an address on one end, for the photographer and studio, I assume – ‘Hugh Penfold, Ashford, Kent’. Then there is a number ‘5’ in pen, some small text in pencil (‘1st’, perhaps) and finally more words in pencil ‘Chapman RW Kent’.

The last part, as confirmed in dozens of other documents, shows that he served in the Royal West Kent Regiment. I have no idea why that was. My grandmother’s family came from Yeovil in Somerset, my grandfather’s (the Halletts) also from that part of the world. Was there a way someone from there could easily serve for a unit of the army in the south-east of England? Was that a thing? Again, my ignorance – for now – gets the better of me.

Included in the tin box was one pristine RW Kent badge. Another, in a moment, would go on to blow my mind.

Two photos showed the war grave, so were clearly taken post-War.

One is an up close shot. My deduction, in line with some other correspondence with the government, is that it was from the War Graves Commission in 1927 and basically showed Billy’s headstone in good condition, with the inscription just as I would see it last month. There is an impressive garland of flowers and when we visited I was struck but how perfectly the graves and greenery around them are maintained. It was the same throughout that part of Belgium, from large cemeteries like the one where Billy rests, with around 5,000 souls, to smaller ones with maybe 50 headstones. You see them dotted all over the countryside.

The second shot is a view of the whole cemetery. I don’t know exactly when that one was taken but I recognised that very same view from the roadside, as soon as I arrived. The big difference is that now the surrounding fields are productive farmland full of corn stalks and there are trees which must be almost 100 years old, spaced evenly, elegantly framing the cemetery.

But I think my favourite photo from the whole collection is this last one.

It shows Billy and his comrades. From when? It looks possibly like it’s from the front. But maybe not. There are no trenches in sight and they look in good spirits. So was it maybe in Kent or in France, on the way? But there are tents and more than half the men are wearing the recognisable Tommy helmet (to give the item just one of its nicknames). I feel like they could have easily been going in to battle soon. Who would survive? How did such a photo come to rest in my hands? I’ll never know about its first years.

Billy is standing. He’s second in from the right, in his dress hat but – I’ve just noticed this for the first time – holding his tin hat.

I want to say he looks brave. Some of the men are smiling. Looks like a couple have a cigarette in their mouth. Two in the background appear to be photobombing the whole thing.

One last thing about this – and no comment on the ‘taches, very much the style – is that Billy has a stripe on his arm by this time. In correspondence he is usually referred to as ‘Private Chapman’ but occasionally we see a ‘Lance Corporal Chapman’ or ‘L/Cpl.’ and this would appear to confirm that. Could he have been promoted ahead of fighting? I don’t know, I guess it’s possible. How many times did he engage before the fight in which he died? My grandmother made it sound like he died almost as soon as he got to the front. Again, I will probably never know.

—

What struck me next, among all the items, were the letters relating to the confirmation of his death. You have an image in your head, of a knock on a door, a telegram being delivered, a grief-stricken mother or wife, of tears – of it all played out a million times and in different countries.

But the letters from government departments (‘Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing’, ‘Imperial War Graves Commission’ and so on) paint a picture of uncertainty.

Here I’ve scanned maybe the most important letter. The passage repeated below – addressed to his mother, my great grandmother Frances, rather than my great grandfather Charles? – is dated May 21 1918, so over seven months since he would have been lost, and reads:

Dear Madam

I regret to say that our first news about L/Cpl. Chapman is very sad. L/Cpl. W.Carver 1928, C. Co. 1st R.West Kent Regt. Now in Lewis Gun School in France makes the following statement:

“After the attack on October 4 at Menin Road Ypres, when the list was called Pte Manville 24210, C. Co. said he had seen Chapman killed. We took the objective that time, it was taken back by the Germans, and retaken by us on October 26, when we advanced further. In the meantime, the Germans have been over the spot where Chapman was. He was a new man and I did not know much about him”

As L/Cpl. Chapman’s name has never come in on any Prisoners List from Germany. I fear that L/Cpl. Carver’s account is only too likely to be true. We will, however, continue our enquiries to see if we can learn more.

Yours faithfully

G. G. B.

FOR THE EARL OF LUCAN

As I write that, I get an eerie feeling that last person to type those words was in that government office, on an old typewriter 96 years ago.

There then follow half a dozen other letters, one officially confirming the bad news (though I’m not sure the family would have held out hope after what was written above, not hearing word from Billy and the small fact that the letter is dated after the war ended), but mostly they start to come from the Imperial War Graves Commission and are to do with the grave itself.

The important passage above being:

“…I beg to inform you it is now officially reported that he was killed in action or died of wounds on or shortly after the 4th of October 1917.”

By 9 December 1920 a letter from that commission’s office (33-38 Baker Street, I’m thinking it’s long gone), reveals that Billy’s final resting place at the Hooge Crater Cemetery, Zillebeke, was only after he was moved from a smaller graveyard. A letter read: “In accordance with the French & Belgium Governments to remove all scattered graves and small cemeteries containing less than 40 graves… it has been found necessary to exhume the bodies buried in certain areas”.

I found out he had originally been resting at “a point north west of Gheluvelt”, which I haven’t got pegged on Google Maps.

As well as detailing the new grave’s number, the letter to my great grandfather states: “The re-burial has been carefully and reverently carried out, special arrangements having been made for the appropriate religious services to be held” before ending “I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant”.

I was struck again and again at that sign off. When today would you hear from the government the words “I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant”? Maybe if you’re someone who loses a loved one – not just in the military – in a senseless overseas death? I hope to never find out.

My final two things to call out, among his possessions, are among those that have most affected me. My gran’s family would have requested and paid for a book of ‘The War Graves of the British Empire’, just from the cemetery in Belgium (Part One, A-L) – remember, there were about 5,000 graves alone there, though some I would find out contain more than one soldier, many others were memorials to the unknown.

The scan here shows the page where Billy is mentioned. Much like the hour or so I spent there, on a drizzly Belgium Sunday afternoon, I was struck by the names and namesakes. Either side of Billy’s (William James) entry (bottom left-hand side column) there are each two Chapmans – from Peckham, then West Ealing, then further out to Buckinghamshire and finally another WJ Chapman, this time from Townsville in Queensland, Australia.

The Hooge Crater Cemetery contains, as far as I could tell, graves of those who travelled from all corners of the empire – from Britain, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the Caribbean.

Imagine coming all that way to end up there. Imagine the equivalent graves – for the Germans, French, Belgians, Russians and Americans.

The final piece of the jigsaw is shown here too, though it’s hard to see the detail. It’s similar to the earlier RW Kent brass badge I showed, only this one was wrapped in old paper. Most notably, the badge is covered in dirt, maybe once mud.

I’ll never know but did Billy fall in that badge? Did someone rip it from his uniform? The account above would suggest that wasn’t likely. And why take his badge – common to hundreds of men – rather than something more personally identifiable? But why would he keep it, not clean it, maybe send it home or give to someone else? Another mystery, this one I’ll never be able to solve. Though it’s crossed my mind more than once whether to get some kind of soil analysis done.

—

As I arrived at the Hooge Crater Cemetery in south Belgium that muddy badge came to mind more than once. Sure, I had googled the place’s location and I knew it was well-known, with stone work and an epic sweep designed by Edwin Lutyens, an architect maybe best known for Indian capital New Delhi. But I somehow expected something dingy, a little rough around the edges, certainly smaller.

It’s on a main road, albeit in the countryside, and opposite is a small restaurant/museum for those mainly turning up in tour parties. I wondered how many had a personal interest and how many were there for the history, whatever their connection. The day I was there I saw at least as many people taking a break from cycling. Not only was it a Sunday afternoon in the Low Countries but the Tour de France was on. I expected khaki and got lycra.

In a couple of the photos here I just wanted to try to catch the scale of the place and how its surroundings have changed compared to the photo from the 1920s. But then there’s me and Josie (visiting her great great uncle as his youngest relative from his parents’ line), perched awkwardly next to his resting spot.

I took the following shot on purpose to include the graves on either side of his. To the right as we see it below is ‘A SCOTTISH SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR – KNOWN UNTO GOD’. That kind of anonymous grave was quite common, if not the majority of those there, and I wanted to ask how they knew his nationality but not his identity. But then I didn’t want to ask too hard, for fear of how that might have come to be.

To the left side is ‘Private S.A.SHOEBRIDGE’ – like Billy from the RW Kent regiment and with the same date of death, 4 October 1917. But he was aged 38. Was he one of the men in the group picture from earlier? Was he the older man lying in the front row, cup of tea in hand and without stripes, meaning he was a private? More importantly, what world did he leave behind? Children, as well as a wife and other family?

Our preconception is of the ordinary rank and file being young, often teenagers like Billy. The classic war quotation (actually from the Vietnam era 50 years later) comes to mind: “Old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in”.

But what was his story? I’d like to think that they’re resting together because not only did they fall on the same day but then someone noticed the dates and regiments and saw to it that they would be side by side forever. And every time I came back to ‘What was his story?’, I found myself looking out over the hundreds of other headstones, each with families, people missing them, at least back then. What could I know about them when I really knew so little about Billy?

I’ve come to realise that when culturally we talk about the ‘Unknown Solider’, we aren’t just talking about all the actual people who have died in war. It’s also about the idea that we can still respect and be thankful for those we never knew, who in some way expected to be taking care of future generations they would never know. That’s about as big as it gets.

Billy’s headstone read: ‘HIS DUTY DONE. REST IN PEACE’

—

After the visit to the grave side, also the Hooge Crate museum, I had learnt a lot. I don’t know how much Josie will remember, not yet being eight, but at the time she was taking in the scale of loss and why would grown-ups do that?

Today I look at the documents and photos around Billy and his death in a new light. I see medals, posthumous notes from the king that all relatives must have been sent, and the idea that it was all a noble cause – ‘His Country will be ever grateful to him for the sacrifice he has made for Freedom and Justice’. I guess I’m even surprised the state said thank you.

German forces attacked the château between 24 May and 3 June 1915, and, despite the detonation of a British mine by the 3rd Division, leaving a massive crater, took control of the château and the surrounding area on 30 July. The château and the crater (craters being strategically important in relatively flat countryside) were taken by the British 6th Division on 9 August. It was reclaimed by the Germans on 16 June 1916 and retaken by the British on 31 July 1917 when the 8th Division managed to push past it by about a mile.

The Germans retook the site in April 1918 as part of the Spring Offensive but were expelled from the area by the British on 28 September as the Offensive faltered.

During this time, the chateau was completely destroyed along with the entire village.

—

As I think is obvious if you’ve read this far, I’m no historian of the First World War. I’ve always been interested but my family connection – which I’d long known generally, only in the last year in more detail – was what’s made me think harder about what happened. This year, we’ll hear more about that conflict than probably any time in recent decades. Understandably so.

But it’s so hard to really feel like we knew what it was like to be in it, either fighting or worrying and grieving for those on the front line. I hope this family story has shed a little new light on what it was like, as either the person going to war or those left behind.

It has helped educate me and I know the loss of Billy, and all that represents, stayed with my grandmother until she died, 71 years after her brother.

Over about a decade as a manager I had that sinking feeling on a couple of dozen occasions – it wasn’t just someone good leaving but someone great, someone deemed irreplaceable, even.

They knew it too. Often I wasn’t even their direct manager but they were good enough to come and tell me too, face to face. Sure, they sometimes couldn’t make eye contact at that moment but they did the stand-up thing. I remember every time it happened.

Bad is good?

But the more I thought of it, the more I learnt it wasn’t such a bad thing. As the years went by I even prepared the best people to leave. Here are my reasons why:

1. Let people grow, let people go. Great employees, assuming they’re not at the pinnacle of their career, will need to grow. That can’t always happen in the company where they work. Ideally it will, for many years, but often it won’t. The worst thing a manager can do is then try to hold someone back, perhaps even by convincing them they don’t warrant a great career elsewhere or no one else would be interested.

Solution: Talk openly about next moves. Show your best people you want them to succeed as people, not just as staff. In the majority of cases great people stayed longer because they felt the company had their interest at heart. And we did. The goodbye handshakes were always hard but felt right.

2. It’s the elephant in the room. You know that bit in formal HR reviews, perhaps the bit that feels most fake, when a company asks someone Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? Five years is a long time. Who thinks they will be at the same employer? But which employee talks about being somewhere else? This topic shouldn’t just be broached at an awkward once-a-year moment. It’s also arguably beats telling your manager: “Where will I be? Doing your job.”

Solution: Don’t just talk about medium- or long-term career goals in formal reviews.

3. The best people come back. Sometimes you genuinely can’t move someone along into a new role, whether more senior or not. Sometimes leaving the fold is the only option. But that doesn’t mean they won’t grow elsewhere. On a number of occasions, the best people are people you end up working with again. If your company is good enough to hold on to you, then those staff, three or five years down the line, will be great boomerang employees.

Solution: Always leave the door open for a returnee. Keep in touch as they make their way – seek to work with them again, even if you yourself move on.

To dissuade a key staffer from moving, maybe by not telling them how good they are… well, that just feels wrong. Get this right and you and the best people you work with will be winners over the long term, over whole careers.

This reminded me of some conversations a few years back. It wasn’t long before the Beijing Olympics and I was interviewing the co-CEO of SAP. We were talking about both software piracy and how the Olympics might make Chinese authorities more respectful of intellectual property. (Fake ‘Beijing 2008’ T-shirts, anyone?)

SAP’s boss mentioned it was quite hard to duplicate what his company does. Sure, it’s just code on CDs (back then) or for download. But you need all the professional services, the ongoing updates and all the expertise that comes with such all-encompassing software.

Then someone mentioned having seen a perfectly copied BMW X5 SUV in China – at least “perfectly” on the surface. Who knows what engine it contained. Same with various smart-phones and gadgets.

Then a third person had the killer story. Some executives from the telecoms equipment arm of Japanese manufacturer NEC were visiting southern China when their hosts mentioned already visiting an NEC factory in a certain province. The Japanese execs looked puzzled. So their host explained the large, sophisticated facility – right down to the ‘NEC’ sign over the front entrance.

It turned out NEC had never been in that part of the world.

So yes, it isn’t only possible to seize an entire factory. It’s also possible to copy one (as certain other companies have found out).

And next time you hear someone complain about having their work ripped off, think about how easy it is. It’s not right and it might not be your work we’re talking about but it happens all the time and at a scale we rarely consider.

]]>https://tphallett.com/2013/11/21/getting-copied-join-the-club/feed/0PiratestphallettPiratesAnother reason people talk to journalistshttps://tphallett.com/2013/10/18/another-reason-people-talk-to-journalists/
https://tphallett.com/2013/10/18/another-reason-people-talk-to-journalists/#respondFri, 18 Oct 2013 09:09:51 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1053I’ve been going through some old reporter notebooks, some going back 15 years. (I’m about to throw them out – just looking for anything interesting or a few contacts – which means I’m not a hoarder, since you wonder.)

Back then I was a young(ish) journalist on a B2B technology publication. Most of the people I had to speak to for my job were senior execs and on average 10-20 years older than me. If they weren’t much older than me it meant they were high-fliers. Either way, it could be intimidating.

I spent a lot of time thinking I needed to impress them – or at least prove myself to them – by understanding often complex technologies and how they made companies money.

This much I know

But, now that I’m older and I find myself speaking to younger reporters in media and marketing, I realise these people weren’t interested in how smart I was. There was nothing I was going to say in a short conversation – where, let’s face it, they’d be doing most of the talking – that would tell them much about who I was.

But, what I’m now certain about is that they cared about the information I was exposed to.

Journalists are among the most plugged-in people around. Knowing the latest goings on, including gossip, is perhaps the biggest part of the craft. There are plenty of journos who can’t write for toffee but if they are king of the scoop then they’re successful. (Those the other way around, craftspeople in the business of words, are often the best editors, at all levels.)

I realise now how many liked media work, whether formal interviews or a catch-up over a beer, because of the information it exposed them to.

As one CIO told me back then when he rushed in to an event at the last minute: “The dough is in the flow.”

]]>https://tphallett.com/2013/10/18/another-reason-people-talk-to-journalists/feed/0Reporter's notebooktphallettReporter's notebookWhere won’t you find an ad these days?https://tphallett.com/2013/10/06/where-wont-you-find-an-ad-these-days/
https://tphallett.com/2013/10/06/where-wont-you-find-an-ad-these-days/#respondSun, 06 Oct 2013 20:45:52 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1047Ever considered the limits to advertising space? How about what it’s like to be confronted with a promotion when you’re least expecting it, perhaps out of context?

A few years back on an editor’s blog (which frankly gave me way too much licence and isn’t there anymore – or I’d link to it) I wrote about using the names of wi-fi networks to advertise.

I got the idea after coming across some creative naming near my home. A less-than-subtle SSID read ‘PRIVATE – KEEP OUT’. It wasn’t password protected. I suspect the owner did well to spell ‘private’ correctly, though probably was all SHOUTY in real life.

Another had the owner’s name in it, which is bad juju in security circles.

And finally I started seeing them for cafés but with something akin to ‘Pete’s café – 20% off’. I’m sure Pete was snappier than that but you get the idea.

For a while it became quite a thing. This all happened while I was putting together atlarge.com (it’s also not there anymore but you can read more about that venture, a wiki for the world’s wi-fi hotspots and power points – not PowerPoints, puke – starting with those at airports.)

I was obsessed with how people know about the all-important wireless networks increasingly all around them but not visible. (In the ‘ether’, as early airwave science had it – thus Ethernet, which wasn’t wireless at first, but now I’m confusing myself.)

Recently this got me thinking about other places people are advertising – or at least, in modern parlance, placing a call to action (CTA).

But more relevantly for the kind of thing I normally write about (What? No more butcher talk?) is the idea of using a Facebook header – or something similar like the massive Google+ masthead or your Twitter page background – for conversions.

]]>https://tphallett.com/2013/10/06/where-wont-you-find-an-ad-these-days/feed/0tphallettTattoo head‘Native advertising’ – the buzziest of buzz wordshttps://tphallett.com/2013/09/06/native-advertising-the-buzziest-of-buzz-words/
https://tphallett.com/2013/09/06/native-advertising-the-buzziest-of-buzz-words/#respondFri, 06 Sep 2013 09:25:17 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1041I started using Flipboard regularly a few months back. (It might be the next great social network, don’t you know.) I don’t just mean in the sense of viewing their category feeds (Business, Design, Style etc.) or the stream of those I follow on Twitter more graphically – both of which I also do – but to create my own feeds or ‘magazines’, in their parlance.

That’s not because they garner lots of eyeballs for Collective Content. In fact, despite the odd bit of promotion I’ve done, hardly anyone follows the mags (which are excellent, by the way).

It’s more because it’s an easy way to pull together various links on subjects that I professionally care about in a way that is easy – pretty, even – to look back at later.

The two mags I maintain are called ‘Collective Content’ and ‘Native advertising’. The first is a catch-all for almost all the content marketing-related subjects my business cares about. I say “almost all” because the other magazine is about native advertising, which is really a sub-section of the first mag.

And here’s the rub. This post isn’t really about Flipboard – which looks like it has a great future – but how people respond to terms such as content, marketing, content marketing and native advertising.

It appears ‘native advertising’ punches above its weight in terms of attention, even though I ‘flip’ to it about five times less often than my Collective Content magazine and even though it is a minor piece of the whole realm of what’s possible now.

I don’t know for sure why that is. Native depends on media publications (arguably also Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media) in a way that other forms of content marketing don’t.

And publications still have a combined louder voice than content emanating from companies. So of course native is going to get more airtime. Just a theory.

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Follow Tony on Twitter – @tphallett

]]>https://tphallett.com/2013/09/06/native-advertising-the-buzziest-of-buzz-words/feed/0CC mag on FlipboardtphallettCC mag on FlipboardI’m backhttps://tphallett.com/2013/09/03/im-back/
https://tphallett.com/2013/09/03/im-back/#respondTue, 03 Sep 2013 13:59:53 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1036Often I’ve published to these pages with a desire to write something but not enough to say. This is, after all, one of those self-indulgent personal logs. But in the last few months I found myself afflicted by the opposite – lots to say and no oomph to say it. It was beyond writer’s block (which was always alien to me anyway).

Those who read these pages will know I’ve had something of a hiatus. Three months is the longest I’ve gone without writing something for many years.

For those who know me personally, you’ll know why maintaining this blog just hasn’t been a priority.

But I’ve had to get stuck in to some work projects and with that has come ideas and oomph to get writing this personal blog too.

This started as a place to say all kinds of things – though the promise of Work, play, family and other stuff quickly turned in to media, London, hyperlocal and a little bit of politics. My best-performing post remains The price of UK petrol versus the price of US gas, thanks in parts to the HuffPo, the fact the subject never goes out of fashion and that I wrote it with some longevity in mind.

But from 18 months of spouting off, without always having lots to say, this summer turned into not writing anything, when I in fact had lots to get off my chest.

My lessons from this time, which may well just be specific to me (health warning: don’t read too much into this), are:

When one little blog stops, the world keeps turning.

Not only does the world keep turning but with a number of months of historical content page views hardly decline.

Write this stuff primarily for yourself. In my case my day job is for other people.

When you’re going through bereavement or any other major life period, don’t give a hoot about a blog, unless it’s therapeutic and helps. There are, for most of us, lots more important things. It’s obvious but I don’t mind saying it.

]]>https://tphallett.com/2013/09/03/im-back/feed/0tphallettTypewriter for writer's blockThe economic case for immigration reform – Meeker slideshttps://tphallett.com/2013/06/02/the-economic-case-for-immigration-reform-meeker-slides/
https://tphallett.com/2013/06/02/the-economic-case-for-immigration-reform-meeker-slides/#respondSun, 02 Jun 2013 09:33:02 +0000http://tphallett.com/?p=1031A few weeks back I wrote very personally about issues around immigration – including my own. That piece, although I made no attempt to be concise, still didn’t say much about the economic lunacy of illogical immigration caps.

Well, it turns out someone else has made that case much better than I ever could. Mary Meeker is known for her insight into mobile and internet trends but below, with colleague Liang Wu, she talks about immigration.

Sure, it is mainly with technology and the US in mind, which you might expect from someone at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. But the points are well made.